C-BAD-014
Barista: Katherine Wade
Date: Jan-8-2020
Receipt: C-BAD-014
Subject: Omens
We were tracking the hound along the river, past the trees near Mellifont Abbey, when we found the deer.
It was fresh.
Should've been steaming in the cold, but it wasn't. The wound was too clean. The body too still. No struggle. Just… silence. ████'█ █████. ████ ████████, ███ ██ ███████ ███████ ███ █████, ███████ ██ ██ ██ ████. █████. ████ ███, ████ █████—████ █████████ ███ ████, █████████ ███ █████. ████████ █████ ██████ █ █████ █████ ███ ██.
And then I saw it. Or—no, I felt it first.
A ripple of awareness. The sharp snap of brittle twigs beneath hooves, the damp scent of overturned moss. The breath of the hills, slow and steady, until—
Stillness.
A tension sinking into the marrow. Ears twitching, nostrils flaring, heart slamming, slamming, slamming. A presence, unseen but absolute. Not movement. Not pursuit. Just inevitability. Then the sound. A howl—curling at the edges of my hearing, impossibly distant and unbearably close all at once. It entered—not just my ears, but my bones. Slipped between thought and reaction, reverberating in my skull like a bell rung too hard, too fast. It was pulling, dragging, screaming into me—except it wasn't me, was it?
It was the deer's moment—stretched thin, unraveling in ways nothing should.
The breath seizing in its chest. The crackling of veins bursting under unseen pressure. The world folding in on itself. No escape. No time to run. No struggle. Just the weight of something ancient and final—pressing, pressing, pressing, until the body simply stopped.
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Decaffeinate Receipt
“A-Martyr.”
Theology Trivia | Word Puzzle | 3 Words